Architect and historian Jonathan Massey is an accomplished scholar of modern architecture and a leading authority on architecture and planning education. He holds undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Princeton University as well as a Master of Architecture degree from UCLA. His professional training includes practice experience at Dagmar Richter Studio, Brantner Design Associates, and Gehry Partners along with teaching experience at several schools.
Before joining Taubman College in 2017 as professor and dean, Massey was dean of architecture at California College of Arts in San Francisco. Prior to that, at Syracuse University, he served as a Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence and chaired the Bachelor of Architecture program and the University Senate. In addition, he co-founded the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, which transforms the ways that history and practice of architecture and urbanism are understood and taught.
Massey’s research shows how architecture mediates power by forming civil society, shaping social relationships, and regulating consumption. In Crystal and Arabesque: Claude Bragdon, Ornament, and Modern Architecture (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), Massey reconstructed the techniques through which American modernists engaged new media, audiences, and problems of mass society. His work on topics ranging from ornament and organicism to risk management and sustainable design has appeared in many journals and books, including Aggregate’s essay collection Governing by Design: Architecture, Economy, and Politics in the 20th Century (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). With Barry Bergdoll, Massey edited Marcel Breuer: Building Global Institutions (Lars Müller, 2018), which shows how this leading Bauhaus and Brutalist designer shaped the institutions of 20th century society.
Massey is regularly featured in professional journals and podcasts addressing education for architects and planners. For his thinking on these issues, see his Architects Newspaper editorial Building the Discipline We Deserve, his Archinect Sessions podcast Aggregating Architectures, his Social Design Insights podcast Teaching Change, and his Architectural Record essay Changing Course in Architectural Education
Lectures:
- “Infrastructure Worth Building”